


when you say you could say

by sakuraba



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, odd friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 12:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9897332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakuraba/pseuds/sakuraba
Summary: So it goes.(Post-Canon snapshots of Ryouga's life, specifically his friendship with IV, his relationship with Durbe, and all the weird stuff in between.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vriskacircuit (oogenesis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oogenesis/gifts).



> A quick birthday present for the lovely Claire, who is The Big Tomoship!! IV is here because I have no self-control, at all, ever.

The thing about war is that, eventually, it’s over. Logically, Ryouga knows this; it’s just the first time he’s ever been around to see it.

After the end, he does the only thing he can do: he goes home. Rio is already there, he knows – they’d reconvened at the post-galactic kiss-and-cry, only for her to head back to start letting things reorient. He doesn’t really know why he’d stayed out longer, what he’d been expecting to find. Eventually, he wanders back. He always does.

Except this time things are different. This time, two shadows are flickering at the edge of the property, kicking around with just enough distance to be considered separate. They don’t talk. Not yet.

That night, Ryouga doesn’t sleep at all.

\---

IV – _no, I told you we’re done with that whole number thing now, just call me Thomas_ – IV is, unsurprisingly, the first one to speak. “So who’s the nerd.”

Ryouga grunts, thinks _well we were kind of in love a few thousand years ago, and then kind of in love again, but now I’m fourteen again and kinda just wanna sleep for ten years – only, hey, I can’t, thanks for playing Save The World kids but don’t think winning is gonna get you out of any trauma._ Instead, he says, deadpan, “My husband.”

Thomas pulls a face, but has apparently learned his lesson about willing suspension of disbelief. “Aren’t you twelve? I don’t think you’re ready for that kind of commitment yet.”

A bite of cereal and an eyeroll, and, “It’s called a joke. You know, like when you put my sister in a coma?” But Thomas only flinches at that, so Ryouga adds, “What, are you jealous that over the course of a thousand years I’ve known people other than you?”

“Of course not. What, do you think you’re my only friend?”

“Yes.”

Thomas blinks at that, puffs a laugh into his spoon as he looks away. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I guess you are.”

\---

“You’re going to have to say something eventually.”

Durbe looks up from whatever he’s drawing, castles architected out of graphite. His head falls a bare degree to the side. “I’m not avoiding conversation,” he says. “I just don’t have anything to say.”

“Right.” Ryouga snorts gently. His memories are still in flux, sometimes barely accessible and sometimes so overwhelming his body shakes, but he feels like Durbe has a history of dulling Ryouga’s edges. “So you’re just going to sleep in my basement forever acting like nothing happened.”

“Truth be told I was hoping I’d upgrade to first floor at some point.”

Ryouga closes his eyes and feels the corner of his mouth quirk unconsciously. “Take whatever room you like. It’s not like people are climbing all over themselves to stay here.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. What about..?”

It takes Ryouga a second to realize what he’s talking about. “Oh, Fo– Thomas? He’s a bastard if there ever was one. He’d be lucky to sleep in my yard.”

“Hmm.” Durbe smiles a little, pencil catching on a corner of some faraway palace. Ryouga can remember it, if he tries. “A friend, then?”

“N– I–” He pauses, thinks about how they’d clung to the edge of the property and how he hasn’t been beyond it in days, and how long has it been since he had sushi? Too long, as always. “Yeah. Yeah, he– do you wanna meet him?”

\---

It takes Ryouga approximately 45 seconds to remember that Thomas is the worst human being alive.

“So I was sitting there at the window surrounded by girls – as usual, I mean, you know how it is–” Thomas rambles. He’s preening nervously, hackles up so far they’re threatening to hang him. The thing is, Ryouga wouldn’t really say that he _likes_ Thomas – not the way you’re supposed to like your friends, at least, the way that drives you to devote time to them and learn more about who they are. But he knows that this bullshit is a delicate cocktail of toxic masculinity, past trauma, and daddy issues, and Ryouga’s already claimed him as a friend to someone whose opinion at least somewhat matters to him so he wishes he’d just _cut it out already._

He’s about to open his mouth to say so – preferably mosaiced in with a colorful array of insults – when Durbe surprises him, cheek cupped in his palm and eyes alight with genuine interest. “But you don’t duel for fame, do you? I don’t mean to presume, but…”

Thomas stutters something around his straw, and Ryouga watches as at least the first level or two of defenses melt away, leaving something less polished and more honest out in the open. From his place across the table, Ryouga steals a look at Durbe: slight and sharp and better at dealing with people than almost anyone Ryouga’s met in any life. He thinks he remembers a thumb rubbing circles into his knuckle. The sun glints on Thomas’s glass.

Ryouga excuses himself and washes his face in the bathroom.

\---

 The worst thing about wealth is that your two friends from different lives suddenly decide it’s cool to crash at your house whenever they want, which is always, and as such you get to be both a friend and an excuse to avoid familial dysfunction when really you’ve got enough of your own to be dealing with. But Thomas has the newest X-Box and lets Ryouga keep it at his house – not like Michael or Chris are going to use it, and Tron, well, he has a 3DS – so Ryouga counts it as a modest success.

“Durbe’s much cooler than you,” Thomas informs him dutifully as his Skull Girl KOs. Ryouga briefly considers squirting the remainder of his water bottle at him, only to decide against it on the grounds that it would be a waste of God-given nutrients. He elbows him in the ribs instead.

“Your standard of _cool_ are pretty much the bottom of my list of concerns,” he says. They swap controllers because they’re children and still hold Player 1 status in sacred regard. New Game.

“But you admit you’re concerned!”

“Concerned with keeping you out of my hair, yeah.” Press start. “He’s really into history and stuff – I bet him and III would get along, if you ever want to bring him by.”

Thomas hums non-comittally. Ryouga’s about to make a snide remark when the lack of bite hits him – not even an attempt at a comeback, just a noise in the back of his throat and an uncomfortable shift as Ryouga lands a critical hit on his fighter. Huh.

He considers making fun, considers mocking Thomas back into normality, because he’s seventeen and it’s stupid of him to care so much about how important he ranks in his only friend’s regard. Instead, he says, “You’re my best friend.”

Thomas is quiet for a long moment. “Sap,” he says eventually, flush creeping into the tone itself. Knock-Out.

They switch controllers and start again.

\---

“Nasch Mouth,” Thomas says.

“A play on the band Smash Mouth,” Durbe responds dutifully. He doesn’t look up from his journal, even when Thomas makes a noise of due affirmation.

“Nasch Gordon.”

“That horrible 1980s movie.”

“That _awesome_ 1980s movie. Nasch browns.”

“The…” A pencil pressed delicately to the corner of Durbe’s mouth. “…breakfast food?”

Thomas clasps him on the back, looking a little teary-eyed. “I think you’ve got this.”

From his place doing homework on the floor, Ryouga casts them an annoyed glance. “I’m really starting to regret introducing you two.”

\---

Thomas has just left for home when Ryouga blurts out, “Just kiss me already, asshole.”

Durbe blinks, and then dawn breaks out across his face, a smile so bright it draws his eyes shut. “Of course, my king.”

A few thousand years without mouths has got them both a little rusty; their teeth clatter together, and Durbe has to take off his glasses, and it’s ultimately just extremely embarrassing for both parties involved. Ryouga is embarrassed. Durbe is elated.

“If you two lovebirds are done,” Thomas says mildly, sliding back into the room with a sniff, “I forgot my jacket.”

\---

At the end of the day, Ryouga isn’t really sure what he is. Old. Young. Human. Barian. Bully. Friend. He and Rio still bind each other’s hair up at night before bed, soaking in feelings of homesickness and cabin fever. Sometimes they go out and catch fireflies. Sometimes he tries to speak without moving his mouth. It’s a process.

Eventually, Durbe learns his way around an X-Box controller; eventually, Thomas stops being a narc (well. Sort of.) and starts bringing Michael hang out with them sometimes. Other times, when the weather is clear, they all sprawl out on mats outside, inking in constellations with their fingertips and telling Thomas stories from home. Durbe’s always the first to fall asleep, those nights, and Thomas soon after – they’re a mess of adolescent boy, all sharp angles and far-flung limbs and six names for three boys, and it’s a miracle not of them have caught cold yet.

Durbe’s elbow in his gut and Thomas’s arm flung over his neck, Ryouga falls asleep.


End file.
